Our bus is racing down the highway toward Baghdad with the Jordan-Iraq border behind us. As our delegation enters Iraq my first thoughts have to do with the absolute humanity of us all. Beyond and beneath all the hostilities that rage across political borders, are we not just human beings and children of one Creator?

Official rules and political authorities often hold a great deal of power over us when we do not recognize the human beings behind them. We might have been intimidated by the power and authority of the Iraqi border official if it had not been for the fact that he was simply a very friendly man. In a conversation with a small group of delegation members, he talked about the fact that soccer is very popular in Iraq, and he then told us the name of his favorite soccer team. This was just a small example of how this man's humanity became evident despite the official rules and government protocol that he was following.

Similarly, when we met with a top consular official in the U.S. embassy in Amman, we could have been totally taken by his official position and the seeming power of the fortified embassy building in which he worked, but we caught glimpses of his humanity in the midst of the "party line" he was giving us. For example, he spoke a number of times about how he has a hard time trying to fit his own sense of morality into a position in which he is expected to simply follow U.S. policy. At another point in the meeting, he expressed some stress about the fact that his day was so full because he had to take his kids for doctor's appointments. Small glimpses of a real person with real everyday needs beyond the clout of his official position.

And then there is our delegation group - the ever-diligent and hard-working band of peacemakers, right? Well, actually, we are a somewhat ragged bunch as we ride for over 14 hours to Baghdad on a bus. We negotiated a later breakfast so that we could sleep in at least a little. That's one small example of the many ways in which we, too, are very human even as we engage in our "official" CPT work.

In a challenging letter to the early Ephesian church, the apostle Paul talks about how Christ breaks down the dividing walls and hostilities between people, and it makes me think about how one of the simplest ways of breaking down hostility is to recognize the humanity of those involved in a conflict - including oneself!

Under this current threat of war the international community will be bustling with weighty policy decisions and military maneuvering, and yet the lives of real people continue to be at stake. Iraqi people who are suffering under the sanctions, border guards who go home and watch soccer games, consular officials whose kids need to go to the doctor, peacemakers who need a good night's sleep - we are all standing on level ground in spite of the dividing walls that loom around us.

At the end of the day, maybe the problem arises when people (or entire nations) exercise the "privilege" of concealing or denying their humanity. Tomorrow when we wake up in Baghdad, I expect our delegation will begin to meet many people for whom such a privilege would be ridiculous if it were even remotely possible. God help us to be human!

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